New Congress Faces Same Partisan Divisions

Battles Over Government's Cost and Size Are Likely to Dominate Coming Months

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Speaker of the House John Boehner holds up the gavel after being re-elected on the first day of the 113th Congress on Thursday.
REUTERS

By

Sara Murray And

Patrick O'Connor

Updated Jan. 3, 2013 11:42 p.m. ET

The House has re-elected embattled Republican John Boehner as speaker on Thursday. The Ohio lawmaker won a second, two-year term as leader with 220 votes, losing just a handful of votes in the Republican-controlled chamber. (Photo/Video: AP)

The new Congress convened Thursday to an all-too-familiar backdrop of looming fiscal showdowns, leaving incoming members to ready themselves for the same kind of divisive battles faced by the last Congress.

Signs of discord were evident in the GOP ranks as nine Republicans voted for someone other than Rep.
John Boehner
(R., Ohio) to be speaker of the House. Their public defiance—votes were cast on the House floor in front of his friends and family—highlighted the challenges ahead for Mr. Boehner, days after 151 of his GOP colleagues broke with him on legislation to prevent tax rates to rise for most Americans.

Mr. Boehner's continued struggle to unify his party marks just one of the plot lines for the 113th Congress as lawmakers wade into what is expected to be another ferocious skirmish over the cost and size of the federal government.

The new Congress will soon be confronted with difficult votes on raising the government's borrowing limit, as well as on measures to deal with across-the-board spending cuts that are now scheduled to take effect on March 1 and a stopgap spending bill to fund the federal government that expires in late March.

"Public service was never meant to be an easy living," Mr. Boehner said in a speech from the rostrum Thursday. "If you have come here to see your name in the lights or to pass off a political victory as some accomplishment, you've come to the wrong place. The door is right behind you."

Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), who had been absent for the past year while recovering from a stroke, slowly walked up the 45 steps to the Senate on Thursday, with Vice-president Joe Biden nearby. (Photo/Video: AP)

There were 82 new House members and 13 new senators among those taking the oath of office Thursday afternoon. They will join their veteran colleagues in what's sure to be a caustic debate to raise the debt ceiling.

President Barack Obama has said he won't negotiate with Congress over the nation's statutory borrowing limit, but Republicans believe they can demand and win spending cuts

"We have very few pieces of leverage that we can use by being the minority of divided government," Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) said in an interview with conservative radio host
Hugh Hewitt.
"This is one of the obvious ones."

The next Congress is likely to see the same divisions that regularly left the 112th Congress gridlocked. And incoming members, many elected by wide margins, came to Washington armed with promises to reach across the aisle—even as they outlined partisan goals

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A young girl raises her right hand as newly elected members are sworn in during the first session of the 113th Congress on Thursday.
Getty Images

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Timeline: John Boehner's Career

Rep.
Matt Salmon
(R., Ariz.) offered a dim assessment of the relationship between the last Congress and the White House. "It's like the most dysfunctional family I've ever seen," he said. "It's very frustrating that we can't put aside some of our partisan differences."

At the same time, Mr. Salmon's legislative priorities—a pledge not to raise taxes, for instance—likely make compromise tough.

Previously elected to Congress in the 1990s, Mr. Salmon initially abstained in the vote for speaker on Thursday to signal to leadership that he thinks conservatives haven't done enough to cut federal spending. He eventually voted for Mr. Boehner.

Mr. Boehner's re-election as speaker was never in doubt Thursday, but Republican aides needed to find GOP lawmakers who had not voted and bring them to the House chamber to ensure the election wouldn't go to a second ballot.

In the end, nine Republicans voted for someone other than Mr. Boehner, including three who chose Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and two who backed former Rep.
Allen West
(R., Fla.), who was defeated in November.

Rep.
Steve Stockman
(R., Texas) voted "present," and two other Republicans—Reps.
Raul Labrador
(R., Idaho) and
Mick Mulvaney
(R., S.C.)—declined to vote, even though both were in the chamber.

Mr. Labrador checked his phone as his name was called for a second time, and Mr. Mulvaney stood at the back of the chamber as the clerk read his name again.

Along with the prospect of political battles, Thursday brought the ceremony of welcoming a new band of lawmakers.

On the steps of the Capitol Thursday morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi welcomed Democratic women in the House. Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) was greeted by Vice President Joe Biden as he climbed the Capitol steps almost a year after suffering a stroke.

During the vote for speaker, Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican, perched on the edge of his chair as one of his grandchildren nestled behind him and seven others piled into nearby chairs.

Some Republicans are starting to look beyond the looming budget battles to the prospect of tackling a tax overhaul and other legislative priorities.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.), who spent much of the past year laying the groundwork for a sweeping overhaul of the tax code, said legislation Congress passed this week to lock in income-tax rates was "only the first step."

"We need to make the tax code simpler and fairer for families and small businesses," Mr. Camp said. "We need to pursue comprehensive and fundamental tax reform to make American businesses and workers more competitive in the global marketplace."

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